17 April 2006

PRESS RELEASE

Canary Foundation makes $50,000 seed grant to the Plasma Proteome Institute for development of an antibody-based mass spectrometry method for cancer diagnosis

The Canary Foundation, the nation’s only nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to early cancer detection (www.canaryfoundation.org), has given the Plasma Proteome Institute (www.plasmaproteome.org) a $50,000 seed grant to further develop a novel method for validation of biomarkers for early detection of cancer. Drs. Leigh Anderson and Terry Pearson will be the primary investigators for the research that will be performed in Washington, DC and at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

With the Canary Foundation Seed Grant funds, we will use antibodies against selected human stress/inflammation associated proteins and against selected prospective biomarker proteins for ovarian cancer for optimisation of the SISCAPA technique.

The objective is to develop a generic, high-throughput approach for derivation and selection of antibodies useful for immunoaffinity isolation of biomarker peptides from human plasma. Selected immunoreagents will be used to develop a quantitative protein mass spectrometry method of general utility for validation of biomarkers and ultimately, for detection of clinically relevant biomarkers in human plasma as a diagnostic tool for human disease, including cancer.

In the spirit of the Canary Foundation, the research will take place in a multi-disciplinary collaborative effort involving labs in Washington, DC (Plasma Proteome Institute; Leigh Anderson) Victoria B.C. (University of Victoria/Genome B.C. Proteomics Centre; Terry Pearson, Angela Jackson, Jamie Thomas and Derek Smith) and will draw on expertise from our colleagues in Seattle (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Mandy Paulovitch) Cambridge, MA (Broad Institute; Steven Carr), Foster City CA (Applied Biosystems; Christie Hunter) and Victoria, B.C. (BC Cancer Agency, Deeley Lab; Brad Nelson).